Amazon Fire TV (2015)

The latest Fire TV adds 4K video support and Amazon's Alexa voice assistant to make the already-excellent $100 media streamer even more powerful.

The latest Fire TV adds 4K video support and Amazon's Alexa voice assistant to make the already-excellent $100 media streamer even more powerful.

1Fire TV

The new Amazon Fire TV is, from the outside, just about identical to the original. It's a 4.6-inch black square standing just 0.7 inches tall, making it about the size of a CD jewel case.

2Remote

The remote has eight buttons: Voice, Back, Home, Menu, Back, Play/Pause, Forward, and a large Select button located in the middle of a glossy black circular direction pad.

3Rear

The back of the Fire TV holds the power connector (for the included proprietary power adapter), an HDMI port, a USB port, an Ethernet port, and a microSD card slot.

4Fire TV OS

On the surface, the Fire TV interface is largely unchanged from the original Fire TV. All apps, services, and media are organized through different categories listed on the left side of the screen, including Prime Video, Movies, TV, Watchlist, Video Library, Games. and Apps.

5Apps

The Fire TV will highlight your Amazon-based content in the Movies, Music, and TV categories, but the weighted selections aren't too obtrusive, and other services like Netflix and Hulu Plus are easy to access.

6Alexa

The newest version of the Fire TV OS incorporates Alexa, the voice assistant used in the Amazon Echo, into voice search. This lets you ask simple questions about news, sports, weather, and general knowledge, and even make reminder lists that sync with the Amazon Echo app.

7Voice Search

For general media searches, you can speak any title, artist, genre, or even app into the microphone and it will give you search results.